Delusion
by Miss Peg
Summary: When the stress of the job gets to Lisbon she finds herself wondering if reality is quite as it seems and in the meantime manages to save a life.


**Title**: Delusion

**Rating**: K+

**Summary**: When the stress of the job gets to Lisbon she finds herself wondering if reality is quite as it seems and in the meantime manages to save a life.

**Disclaimer**: Not mine, no really, I tried to buy it, but it turns out it wasn't for sale.

**Notes**: A Mini Bang fic written for The Mentalist Big Bang challenge on LiveJournal.

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The CBI was falling down around her ears and there was very little that Teresa Lisbon could physically do to stop it. They'd solved just three cases out of the last twenty. Patrick Jane's absence had become more of a hindrance than an assistance, which she had always anticipated it to be. He was annoying and difficult at the best of times and caused a lot of trouble at the worst. But if she was honest, which she struggled to be, he could solve most cases blindfolded. It wasn't that Lisbon and the rest of the team were incapable of performing their duties and closing cases, but there had been a lot of pressure from the top since the closure of the Red John case and Lisbon was in no fit state to be heading up a team of grieving agents. Not that she'd admit that.

Since Jane's arrest she'd struggled to concentrate on the job at hand, more so due to the month and a half she had had to take off because of injury. O'Laughlin had shot her in the most awkward of places which made the operation long and tentative and the recovery particularly frustrating. She thrived in a working environment, not sat on her backside shuffling papers at home.

'Boss, Cho and Rigsby brought in Hofstadter,' said Grace Van Pelt from the doorway, she glanced up and gave a brief nod. She looked drained, not that she'd ever really perked up after the shooting and subsequent death of the assailant, who just happened to be Van Pelt's fiancé. She worried about her junior; deep down when she wasn't too busy worrying about the lingering ache in her mostly recovered shoulder or the perpetual drumming inside her brain.

She walked towards the interrogation room with a file in hand, which she rested on the small table behind the mirror. She listened to Cho and Rigsby questioning the suspect though the focus of her attention was the folder of evidence in front of her. She read back through the case notes on Jane's arrest, trying to pick out some suggestion that the case could be thrown out on a technicality. It was, she hoped, the only way of getting Jane out of jail. Without him there to smoke out some deep seeded plot to frame him for the murder of a serial killer, there was little they could do but pray that his sentencing would be generous.

'Boss,' Van Pelt entered the room suddenly and Lisbon hurried to turn over the file in front of her. As any faithful subordinate would, Van Pelt's furrowed eyebrows returned to their normal state and she gave out the briefest of smiles.

'Don't sneak up on people,' said Lisbon, tucking the file under her arm and following the younger agent out of the room. They fell into step as they walked back towards the bullpen.

'Sorry, boss.'

Lisbon should have apologised in return, after all, she was the one out of line. But she had a lot on her mind and she disliked being interrupted when she was trying to solve Jane's case. If there was even a case that needed solving.

'What's up?' said Lisbon.

'Hofstadter's alibi checks out, but I may have a lead,' Van Pelt said holding up a sheet of paper.

'Get Cho to release Hofstadter while you and Rigsby follow up your lead.'

'But,' Van Pelt whispered then silenced herself.

'Do you have something to say?'

'No, boss.'

They separated at the entrance to the bullpen and Lisbon continued towards her office, where she closed the door and sat down again with the file. She rubbed her painful temple and cursed her decision to forego buying any pain medication the night before. On the bright side, Jane wasn't lingering in her office complaining of being bored. Not that she minded the company, really.

Sometime after eleven when the office had nearly emptied and the cleaners were doing their rounds, Lisbon woke to the sound of drilling in the other room. She removed a sheet of paper from her cheek, pushed her chair back from her desk and opened her door.

'Hello?' said Lisbon, walking out onto a long white corridor that stretched as far as the eye could see. She cocked her eyebrow and frowned, turning around to find her office door had vanished and all around here was a bright pool of white light.

'About time,' said Jane, appearing quite literally out of nowhere.

'What's going on?' she asked, before leaping forwards and wrapping her arms tightly around his shoulders. 'It's good to see you.'

'It's good to see you too, Lisbon,' he smiled, resting a hand upon her back.

Lisbon pulled away and took in Jane's unusual attire, a crisp white suit and vest accompanied by slicked back hair. She hadn't known him from his psychic days, but she'd seen footage of the interview he'd partaken in shortly before his family's death. Though the suit was very much a different colour, it was definitely more elaborate than his usual work wear.

'Am I dead?' she asked, turning around in search of some sort of sign that she was in heaven.

'Do you think you're dead?' said Jane, in his usual irritating manner. She didn't think so.

'Am I dreaming?'

'Do you often dream about me?'

'Will you answer one of my damn questions?'

'Of course you're dreaming, Lisbon.'

'Where are we?'

'Somewhere in your subconscious.'

'Can you just tell me what the hell I'm doing here?' she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

'I hear things aren't going too well at the CBI,' said Jane.

'Who told you that? How do you know anything? You're meant to be in jail.'

'Ah, that's the thing Lisbon, I'm not actually myself. I mean, I am Patrick Jane but I'm not the Patrick Jane that you know. I'm from the past.'

'You have got to be kidding me,' she said, rolling her eyes. 'Like Scrooge?'

'A little bit like that,' he said, pointing a finger up in the air.

'I still don't understand what I'm doing here.'

'Don't look at me.' He rested an arm around her shoulder and guiding her forwards. 'I'm only here to show you a moment from your childhood that you've not allowed yourself to remember.'

They walked together along the white corridor until their pale surroundings were replaced by the home Lisbon had lived in as a child. In the centre of the room her younger self stood, just thirteen years old, with braids hanging loosely down by her shoulders. She remembered tying them seventeen times that day, never quite managing to get them right since her mother's death. She ran a hand through her own dark locks and held them against her neck.

In the other room her father and aunt's voices were raised, something Lisbon had barely remembered. Her younger self rushed behind her father's chair as they entered the room. Lisbon dragged Jane behind the sofa, though she couldn't be sure if anyone even knew they were there.

'We're not really here Lisbon,' said Jane, standing up, only for her to pull him back down again.

'Shh, I don't wanna take any chances.'

'Do you remember this?' asked Jane. They peered over the top of the sofa like fugitives keeping watch over their safe house.

'Vaguely.'

'She didn't do it,' Lisbon's dad said, clenching his fists and banging them against his thighs.

'You don't know,' said her aunt Lydia.

'Neither do you,' he said, shaking his red cheeks and pouring them both a glass of whiskey.

'She left a note, Joseph.'

'No, she didn't, that note was old.'

'She _left_ a _note,_ Joseph,' Lydia repeated.

Lisbon reached out to Jane's arm and squeezed it, her fingers turning white.

'She wouldn't do that to our children,' he slammed the glass down on the coffee table and stood up, his temples pulsing rapidly.

'I don't care what you think,' Lydia said, standing up and walking towards the door. 'My sister drove into the path of an oncoming vehicle, whether you want to believe it or not.'

The sofa and everything around them dissipated into white light and before Lisbon could say anything to stop it, they'd returned to…wherever they'd been before. Nor could she stop the glistening of tears resting on the edge of her eyelids.

'Why did you show me that?' she said, smacking Jane hard across the arm.

'You needed to see.'

'Nobody needs to be reminded of the moment they found out their mother killed themself.'

'This will all become clear, Lisbon.'

'When?'

'Just believe.'

'Believe what?' she said, throwing her arms up by her sides.

Without so much as another word, Jane disappeared into thin air. She turned around, repeatedly, hoping that he would appear once more. But all she could see was the white corridor she'd first stepped out on and there, in the middle, as though it had never moved, was her office door. She ran through it, her heart racing as she sat back down at her desk.

Lisbon woke with a start as her office door opened and Van Pelt stood on the threshold. She looked as tired as Lisbon felt, though she imagined the mug of coffee in her hand was keeping her awake.

'What are you still doing here?' said Lisbon, closing Jane's case file and locking it in her top drawer.

'I've been trying to solve this case, I keep thinking about,' said Van Pelt, only to be swiftly cut off.

'It's half eleven, go home.'

'But.'

'No buts, it's late, get some sleep and we'll revisit it in the morning.'

The young woman nodded her head and closed the door behind her. Lisbon picked up her phone and keys and left her office. As she walked past the bullpen, Van Pelt continued to sit at her desk, clicking away at her computer mouse without so much as a second thought for Lisbon's instructions. She could only do so much.

Lisbon's eyelids grew heavier than the wooden garage door at her family home; she clutched on to her steering wheel with white knuckles and opened the driver side window. The cool night air hit her face like great gusts of wind from a hurricane, keeping her moderately awake. When she pulled into her parking spot, all attempts for her to stay conscious failed considerably.

The car around her disappeared in favour of the white corridor in which she'd seen Jane, she rolled her eyes and took a few tentative steps through the white abyss. Not again.

'Finally, I thought you were never going to turn up,' said Jane from behind her, she twisted around to a spot that had moments before been void of anything.

'Twice in one night?' she asked, her hands outstretched in front of her. Jane merely laughed.

'Haven't you learnt anything? I'm not the same person you met earlier.'

'Right,' she said, with a cock of the eyebrow. 'Because, you're so different to your past self.'

'Actually I am,' said Jane, buttoning up his white suit, more akin to the ones Lisbon was used to seeing him wearing and very different to the one of Past Jane.

She narrowed in on the soft curls of his hair, the only true reminder that Past Jane and the Jane standing before her were different. He had that harrowing look he'd gained after the death of his family. She wanted to reach out to him, but she couldn't find the words, or the confidence to do so.

'What are you going to show me now?' Lisbon asked, with a shake of the head. 'My father, killing himself, too?'

'That was the past, Lisbon; I am merely here to show you what is happening now, in the present. What you're not seeing because you're too busy thinking about me.'

'I am not.'

'You can deny it all you want, dear Lisbon, but I know you've spent every waking second trying to get me out of jail.'

'You don't belong there.'

'Whether I do or not, that is not something you can change.'

'Then why the hell did you bring me here?' she said, standing firmly on the spot with her feet and arms shoulder width apart. 'That's what's supposed to happen, right? I'm supposed to have some light bulb moment and leave here a changed person?'

'Yes, but perhaps not in the way you're expecting.'

He stepped beside her, linked her arm and walked on down the corridor. She wished to ignore his silent demands, but she couldn't seem to control her legs as they moved in step with Jane's. Eventually they arrived outside a small apartment block, somewhere in the city, she assumed.

'Isn't this where Van Pelt lives?' Lisbon asked, looking up at the third floor window she believed belonged to her junior agent.

'You are correct,' said Jane, walking up to the front door with Lisbon still beside him.

'What does any of this have to do with her? What does my mother's death have to do with Grace?'

'Ah, Lisbon, many things in the world are connected whether we see the link or not. You are so busy worrying about closing one specific case. You're forgetting to think about everything else around you.'

'I saw Van Pelt tonight**,**' she said, sighing. 'She's fine, a little wired from drinking too much coffee maybe.'

'She's _fine_, you're _fine_, everything's _fine_.'

'Are you mocking me?'

'I do not mock Lisbon, I imitate.'

'Then don't.'

He pushed open the front door of the apartment building and without so much as walking upstairs; Van Pelt's living area appeared before them. Lisbon moved behind Jane. She would never get used to their being invisible and Van Pelt sitting on a chair in front of them was more than enough for her to want to hide. She'd never even been inside Van Pelt's apartment before, let alone watched her drink herself stupid with the assistance of two bottles of wine.

'She's drinking, so what?' said Lisbon, walking across the room and attempting to pick up one of the bottles.

'We're not really here Lisbon, it won't work.'

'I'll ask you again, what does Van Pelt drinking wine have to do with my mother's death?'

'You see things, but you don't look,' he said, following her across the room and reaching out unsuccessfully to wipe the tears from Van Pelt's face.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'You didn't want to remember what your mother did because you feared that you didn't do enough to stop it.'

'You don't know that,' she said, her voice growing louder. 'You don't know anything about my mother's death.'

'Oh contraire, I know more than you could possibly imagine. I'm the product of your subconscious, Lisbon; I know all that you know and more.'

'Stop psychoanalysing me,' she said, walking towards the door with great strides. 'I want to go home, let me out of here.'

'Very well.'

With a bright white light, the world around her made two transitions, from Van Pelt's apartment, to the white corridor and back to her car where she awoke with a start. She rubbed her throbbing temple and took in each breath carefully. Even in his absence, Jane was being a perpetual nightmare. She rushed up to her apartment where she closed the drapes and set about drinking her own half-empty bottle of wine. Her eyes maintained their heavy state, but her mind was too active at that current moment. She didn't want to go back to sleep, she didn't want to return to whatever dream she'd been having.

Eventually Lisbon stripped off and climbed into bed, her eyes closing as soon as her head hit the pillow. She was more exhausted than tired, a physical exhaustion caused by the stress of the last few months. Jane was in jail, her team were treading water in a fast flowing river and she couldn't even swim long enough to keep her head above water.

'Lisbon,' said Jane, a faint whisper floating in the wind.

'No.'

She refused to be dragged into his little games, even if they were in her head. The room disappeared, the darkness behind her eyes was gone and in its place was the same white corridor she'd been in time and time again. She rolled her eyes and tapped her foot, waiting for his arrival. Unlike before, he appeared in front of her like a flickering hologram that suddenly became corporeal.

'What now?' she asked, folding her arms in front of her.

'Haven't you learnt anything?' he said, running a hand through his wayward hair, twice the size that it usually was. If she hadn't been so annoyed, she'd have laughed at his blond afro.

'Apparently not.'

'Time will tell.'

'Time will tell, is that all you have to say?'

'No, it's not. I also have to tell you that what we're about to see is something that is yet to come.'

'So now you're a psychic,' she said, rolling her eyes.

'Don't be silly Lisbon; you know I don't believe in psychics. The event we're about to witness can be stopped, it can be changed. But only if you allow yourself to accept it for what it is.'

'Let's get it over and done with.'

'If that's what you want,' he said, with a brief smile. He reached out and took her hand, pulling her along the corridor as the world around them changed once more. When all the white had gone, there in front of them was a view of Sacramento. The sun was setting in the West.

'Where are we?'

'Take a look around Lisbon, see it.'

'The CBI?' she asked, tentatively stepping towards the edge of the rooftop. 'What are we doing here?'

'Just wait.'

Following Jane's instructions, Lisbon looked around the rooftop, her gaze following a small creature flying through the air. What she was waiting for, she didn't know, nor did she really want to know. What use was this whole journey he was taking her on? Her mother, Van Pelt, it made no sense at all.

'Don't just look Lisbon, see it,' Jane said, repeating himself like a whisper in her ear.

The rooftop door opened and Van Pelt strolled towards them, her eyes red and puffy, her body a little unsteady. She looked as sad as she had for weeks now, months, since the death of her fiancé. Lisbon didn't know what she was supposed to see, but she watched her faithfully. She'd obviously had a little too much to drink, probably several bottles of wine.

'Is this tonight? I mean is this happening after we saw her in her apartment?' she asked.

'No,' Jane said, sitting down on the edge of the building. 'It's the future**,** Lisbon.'

She glanced at him, frowning at the white jumpsuit she hadn't even noticed he was wearing. Why wouldn't he give her a straight answer? She knew it was the future, he'd already told her that.

'But when?' she said, watching Van Pelt teeter closer to the edge.

'I can't give you that information,' said Jane, doing nothing but watch as Van Pelt stepped up onto the ledge.

'Like hell you can't.'

The junior agent was worrying Lisbon, so much so that she wished she could reach out and stop her. Whatever she was doing, she was going to kill herself if she wasn't careful.

'See it**,** Lisbon,' said Jane. 'See it, don't just look.'

She walked closer to Van Pelt, reached out a hand which she only realised would be pointless as her fingers travelled through her shoulder. She wanted to pull her down, take her home, anything but watch her hovering on the edge between life and death.

'Is this what you wanted Craig?' Van Pelt said, shouting out across the city, her voice wobbled.

'What are you doing?' Lisbon shouted, stepping up onto the ledge beside her. 'You don't want to do this.'

'Should I jump? Is this really what you wanted me to do?' said Van Pelt to the world around her, lifting one foot, laughing a little, then lowering it again. 'If I jump, would you be laughing down there in hell?'

The pit of Lisbon's stomach lurched as the dots connected quickly. Her mother, her junior agent. If she hadn't been so wrapped up in her own problem, worrying about Jane, then maybe she wouldn't have missed what was so blindingly obvious. She knew her team were falling apart. She just didn't realise how badly, or how rapidly it was happening.

'Don't just sit there, do something,' Lisbon shouted, turning to Jane for help, begging him with her voice.

'There's nothing I can do, Lisbon.'

'There must be something,' she said, tears streaming down her face. He walked towards her and held her hand as they stood by the edge.

'Right now,' he whispered. 'There's nothing we can do, but watch.'

She turned her attention back to Van Pelt, back to the young woman who looked up to her, who saw her as more than a senior agent. She saw her as a friend. If only she'd given Van Pelt the same respect, then maybe none of this would be happening. She clutched tighter to Jane's hand as Van Pelt turned around and fell backwards into the air.

'No!'

Lisbon rushed to the edge and stared out at the darkness beneath. She couldn't see Van Pelt, she couldn't see anything. A hand rested on her shoulder and then the world around them disappeared and all she could see was white.

'Take me back there,' Lisbon said, stamping her foot like a petulant child.

'I can't do that,' said Jane.

'I can't let it happen. I won't. Send me home.'

'Very well, but may I remind you that my job here is done. This is the last time I'll see you.'

'Oh,' her head fell forwards and her arms lay relaxed at her sides. She'd grown fond of her recent visits from Jane, even if she'd acted like she hadn't. She missed him, really missed him. He held his arms out to her and she fell into them, holding him tightly as she wished for just another moment.

'I'll always be with you.'

His voice travelled on the wind once more, following her as the white corridor disappeared and she woke up in her bed. Tears landed on her cheeks.

'Van Pelt,' she said, rushing out of bed, putting on the first items of clothing she could find as she ran out to her car. She put her foot on the gas and barely removed it on her journey across town.

She walked up to the front door that Jane had taken her to earlier that night and she stared at the apartment buttons beside it. She struggled to remember which number Van Pelt lived at. Why didn't she know such basic information about her friend?

'Van Pelt,' she shouted, after pressing all of the buttons. A couple of voices came over the intercom**,** shouting at her for waking them. Until a third, more familiar voice sounded on the other end.

'Lisbon?'

'Let me in.'

The door buzzed and Lisbon took the stairs two at a time, thankful for her level of fitness making such an activity easier. She walked down the corridor, searching for the door that belonged to Van Pelt. Eventually one opened and on the other side, Grace smiled at her, with swollen, red eyes.

'Oh, Grace,' said Lisbon, stepping into her apartment.

'I'm sorry,' Van Pelt said, wiping at her face and following her back into the apartment.

'No, I am.'

Lisbon's junior agent frowned at her as she stood on the spot, pawing at her cheeks self-consciously. She filled the space, stood in front of her friend.

'I've been so caught up with Jane and Red John,' said Lisbon, tilting her head in sympathy. 'I should have realised.'

'Realised what?' asked Van Pelt.

'That you needed me.'

'I don't,' said Van Pelt, cut off abruptly by Lisbon.

'You don't need to pretend anymore, Grace; I've been doing it far too long.'

Van Pelt's eyes closed and tears rolled down her stained cheeks, landing upon her top lip and the lower edge of her chin. Lisbon reached out her arms and pulled the young woman into them. She'd seen her cry before, though it had felt uncomfortable. The discomfort she felt made little difference to the memory she had of her junior agent mercilessly ending her own life. There was nothing more important at that moment than doing everything within her power to stop that from happening.

_**The End**_


End file.
